Joystiq just posted a small part of Jay Wilson's GDC talk about Diablo 3. Some excerpts can be found below and you can read the whole article here. We will be posting a video if one such is posted. The post also mentions that Diablo has about 1 million players a day.
But he said that once the game went live, Blizzard realized it was completely wrong about those last two points. It turns out that nearly every one of the game's players (of which there are still about 1 million per day, and about 3 million per month, according to Wilson) made use of either house, and that over 50 percent of players used it regularly. That, said Wilson, made money a much higher motivator than the game's original motivation to simply kill Diablo, and "damaged item rewards" in the game. While a lot of the buzz around the game attacked the real money Auction House, "gold does much more damage than the other one does," according to Wilson, because more players use it and prices fluctuate much more.
"I think we would turn it off if we could," Wilson said during his talk. But the problem is "not as easy as that;" with all of Blizzard's current players, he says the company "has no idea" how many players like the system or hate it.
There was actually a heck of a lot more to that post, but I left out those points. The problem is that the core game-play mechanic of Diablo III, which is loot drops that you worked hard to obtain, is completely overshadowed by the shortcut that is the AH. The AH is actually part of a whole array of problems that exist in the design of Diablo III, but it is one of the more significant ones.
Now, I admit that I am no game designer and I am certainly no business expert either, but from a gaming stand point, I think that there is some sort of potential in a Diablo 3.5, so to speak. Make the game over again, without all the mistakes, take away the AH, give us ladders, offline play, better loot tables, all that good stuff, and put it into a brand new game that won't affect the current one in any way and make people start over again. It can easily be made into a digital download that is free to anyone who has purchased Diablo III. Allow people to have access to the map making tools, allow us to make custom maps, events, and allow the game to be compatible with mods made by the community.
Call me psycho, but I think it could work if done right.
It was actually bashiok that said this, not jay
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
However, Jay later (much later) said this was not true
http://www.diablofans.com/news/1236-diablo-iii-developer-amaa-update-on-auction-house-commodity-sales-working-on-us-servers-account-security-alert-linkedin/
Originally Posted by Blizzard (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)
I'm sorry, I don't remember saying that and if I did then I was drunk and/or wrong. We tuned and balanced the game without the auction house, as there weren't enough people internally using it to test it against gameplay, so we didn't design anything for it.
Heh, sorry to trouble you like that. I'm familiar with that quote. What Bashiok said is that drop rates were too high at start, and Blizzard not anticipating 10 million players in the first month, had to drive all drop rates back a bit for the AH to not fill itself with endgame loot in no time. I doubt much balancing has gone into it after that.
The issue isn't the AH, it's the complete and utter lack of item sinks. He (okay they, but I'm pinning this on him solely based on his PvP "blog") Early on in the closed beta, your average crafting recipe had one or two fixed range stats, then a couple of random rolls. Not ALL random rolls. You know, useful crafting. Somehow, that changed. During one Blizzcon, they mentioned that soulbound gear would only be a few items at level 60. It shipped w/ ZERO bound gear whatsoever.
Everything this guy says is utter crap. He's completely short-sighted and confused as to what problems the AH caused and what was caused by his own incompetence. Yeah, look at your average public game in D2. Seems like a well run, stable economy, right? Seriously? PLAY YOUR OWN GAMES AND LOOK AT THE RESULTS. Idiot.
Ever since D3 came out, while farming Inferno Act 3, I would regularly sell direct upgrades for my character since I prioritized keeping the money rather then trying to deck out my character. I was definitely getting good drops back then. Based on my PayPal I believe it's somewhere along the lines of $3500 from May through July of mostly self found gear. I did began flipping items pretty regularly sometime after 1.0.4 hit though, as somewhere in the process of altering loot the drop chance went up too much, while quality went down quite a bit. In terms of the "drop quality AND quantity", I actually liked where it was at release, but many people complained about all sorts of things.
As of now, loot quality was nerfed multiple times, to the point where farming is simply inefficient compared to flipping. Even though I still play D3, I think I've only found one $10 item (lacunis) this entire month. Pretty terrible from a loot perspective, though I still have fun playing.
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At this point, I really don't think it's possible to save the softcore economy. It's simply broken, and still without a loot sink of any sort for decent items. Personally, I'd like to see a self-found ladder server, preferably cross region for a larger player base (sort of like PTRs).
I don't think the AH itself is a bad idea, as it simply simplifies trading. So if trading is allowed in the game, I feel like the AH also has a spot in the game. However, I think a no-trade and no-AH ladder that resets regularly (maybe every 1-2 months) would be both fun and exciting, simply to see how many people manage to do MP10 on SELF-found gear in that time frame.
I'm hoping Blizzard adds in some sort of separate server with a Ladder. While I'd appreciate ANY ladder system, I do wish they put in a self-found only one.
tally the people who sold items and people who bought items OMG im a genius
From Normal to Hell difficulties there's no AR and you don't need it but then you'd get to Inferno and you'd hit a brick wall because you needed >300AR to even farm A1 but how were you going to get AR when it only came from drops in Inferno? Many players quit at A1 Inferno because of this and the few that progressed did it thanks to trading. If you take away trading then the game dies there at A1 Inferno.
In order for trading to be less relevant the average quality of gear needs to be raised. However there are far too few stats that we rely on so if they just raise the quality and leave everything else alone then all items start looking alike. That's why they need to (and are going to) add more good stats so that gear can still be diverse while being better on average.
This was made just for the likes of you, my friend:
http://www.gamefront.com/dumb-things-fanboys-say-companies-exist-to-make-money/
A Highly Efficient Market is the problem -
the excitement of real trading is the rush of exploiting market inefficiencies and discrepancies of valuation...but when you are sitting there ready to snipe the next mispriced item along with 10000 other players, its no fun. And because of these people, items will converge to a so-called agreed gold value measurable only by statistics and therefore unenjoyable. Some of us out there get paid six digit salaries to do this as their day job...
There is a place for the convenience of AH because gear progression for your average player is difficult (not impossible) to progress through inferno without trading. But it should not be the venue to trade items at the higher end because gold is not the appropriate measure of value for the best items.
My suggestion:
- Add a gold-cap on AH trades (just like the RMAH).
- Create "live-auction chat rooms" with a much higher cap.
- Make gold decay per-account at 10% per week.
These 3 aspects will create a much more exciting endgame trading experience, and the weekly decay cycle will ensure awesome amounts of activity in these chat rooms. The dual system will force rich players to part ways with their "good" items if they really need that cash for the next purchase...these items are depreciating anyway.
This way noone will sit on their gold or sit on their items.
I decided to play without buying items from AH (gold or real) and never regretted it.
Hope they find a solution since AH influence on items and drop rates unfortunately affect also my gaming experience.
Maybe they should add a different category: normal, hardcore and "no AH" characters.
Or offline SP, but that's a dream....
Kill yourself.
http://www.diablofans.com/topic/90668-jay-wilson-auction-houses-really-hurt-game/page__st__20__p__1148837#entry1148837
There is an incredible flaw in the gear design when the final difficulty requires a stat that it only available from drops in that difficulty. They decided to nerf Inferno so that AR isn't really needed much on MP0 but the real problem is still gear progression. Stats should be offered before the content that requires them so that you have a clear progression path that doesn't involve the AH while still allowing the content to be hard if you're undergeared. One of the first patches made it possible for gear to drop at very low rates a few acts earlier so Inferno gear could drop in Hell but it was only a few % chance of dropping on top of the extremely low chances of it being any good so it was still more beneficial to just suicide repeatedly in A1 Inferno for better odds of getting >=ilvl 61 gear.
When they rebalance gear again (in 1.0.9?) I hope that they retune the MP levels so that the lowest MP is similar to the original difficulties but that they also retune items so that you naturally find small amounts of AR towards the end of Hell difficulty.
You simply can not release a online game these days with no built in trading tool. It's not the AH that is to blame.
Think back to the D2 days. Instead of trading ingame, you had to go to external websites which used their own made up currency. You had the same functions, just outside the game and therefore only available to those who realy searched for it. But they were there all the same.
Back in D2, you also tried to generate wealth instead of being excized about the 5th, 10th or 100th legendary shako you found. You tradet it for runes too, which were the currency back in D2.
Ppl who blame the state of D3 on the AH are deluding themself into thinking that D2 was much different. It was not.
That's realy just the most stupid thing ever. Gold is only a currency, If you remove it, the players will find another one. It would just be more complicated.
The AH never was a mistake. Jay Wilson, as immature and dubious as his character was, was the mistake.
Also speaking of character, you sir have almost as many posts here as you have elite kills, I don't even know why I replied to a post as vacuous as yours.
And all those people hailing that D2 was the bee's knees - I'm sorry it isn't, it was good for a time when people were just starting to discover there are others on the internet. The hierarchy from Pgems to Uniques to unattainable rares/crafts/runes and gamebreaking runewords was archaic and ungratifying - nevermind the very few classes that can do hell decently with self-found. If you are still so blind, that game is still there with the open arms of powerleveling hammerdinbots waiting just for you.
Also there is the option for you to play D3 however you want - with or without AH - so if you want to wallow in your morally superior mediocrity the world doesn't care (neither does it care about all your awesome BOAs)
I think it simply could have been handled by making things account bound once you equip, or making the highest end items bind to account/character, such as all level 60 legendary or even just legendary in general. That way the market doesn't CONTINUE to get flooded, as things are used up. (such as with World of Warcraft and other games with successful auction houses) But as it is now, every single item that goes up has the potential to be sold again at some point, and the pool of items just gets larger and larger as more drops and gets discovered... which hurts gold even more because as there are more and more items, the gold is worth less and less. Simple Supply and Demand people... Have to bind items... just have to. Things HAVE to get used up.